You’d Never Know This Fitness Trainer Is Battling A Chronic Disease

Crohn’s kept Sarah Machemer away from her dream for too long—but now she’s doing what she loves, and inspiring others along the way.
Image may contain Clothing Apparel Dance Pose Leisure Activities Human and Person
AleksandarNakic / Getty Images

Sarah Machemer, 36, dreamed of becoming a trainer since she was in high school. The Chicago-based personal trainer went to college for kinesiology. And though her parents doubted it was a reliable career path to choose, it made her feel good to move and to help others be healthy and happy. She knew it was what she wanted to do for a living.

But her senior year at Michigan State, Machemer started having unexplainable stomach pains. She had to go to the bathroom more frequently. When she started seeing blood in her stool, she decided to see a doctor, who diagnosed her with ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation and ulcers in the inner lining of the large intestine, leading to cramping, painful and sometimes near constant diarrhea, and bleeding in the rectum. She was put on medication, and she started to feel better.

She didn't think about it much anymore—until she found herself in a high-stress job, and her symptoms hit again like a ton of bricks. Despite her goals to work in the fitness industry, Machemer chose her first job out of college—in an office instead of a gym—to establish some stability and ensure a bi-weekly check. "Doing this would help minimize stress (or so I thought) and prevent flare ups. This wasn't the case," she says. The job ended up being immensely stressful, and made her IBD worse. "I was going to the bathroom so much that my boss asked me why I was in the bathroom all the time," Machemer tells SELF. She was too embarrassed to tell anyone, so only her parents knew. "[My boss] didn't know I had IBD, so there was a misunderstanding" ending in Machemer being fired. With an air of relief, she went to live at home again. But her symptoms kept getting worse, and eventually, she developed ulcerations on her skin called pyodermas. "One was the size of a golf ball on side of my face." She was hospitalized, and they were able to eventually control her skin with steroids.

"Then two weeks later, I had symptoms again. I was so tired. I was always so active, and my boyfriend was like, 'You're so slow, what's wrong with you?' I called my doctor and explained the same symptoms—going to the bathroom, diarrhea, blood in my stool, crampy." Machemer was admitted to the hospital again, but this time, a colonoscopy determined she actually had Crohn's disease. Both are forms of IBD, but Crohn's can affect any part of the GI tract, where ulcerative colitis only impacts the large intestine (aka bowel).

For the next five or so years, Machemer was able to control her IBD with medication. She held various sales jobs throughout the years—again, not wanting to take the plunge into training considering the impact stress had on her health. "I would have flareups here and there, but it wasn't anything that shook me to my core," she says. But she got sloppy with her meds. "I was feeling so great so decided I didn't need to take my medication," which brought the symptoms back each time she was late or skipped some of the meds.

This is common for patients with a chronic illness, Machemer's doctor David T. Rubin, M.D., chief of gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at the University of Chicago Medicine, tells SELF. "Coming to terms with chronic conditions leads people often to stop maintenance therapy because they feel well." Part of it is due to the lack of communication between patients and their medical teams when managing a chronic disease like IBD. "We want people to be talking openly about this more," Rubin says."But you have to know the right questions to ask and see the right people to stay on track." That's part of the goal of a new campaign both Rubin and Machemer are participating in, called IBD Unmasked. By lifting the veil of mystery surrounding IBD and encouraging patients to be proactive about their health, both patient and doctor want those suffering to know that there are effective treatments out there. In fact, Machemer's story is proof that it's possible through modern medicine to beat IBD and pursue your dreams despite how debilitating the disease can be.

Sarah Machemer

After messing with her meds too much, Machemer's medication stopped being effective. At the same time, she was drinking, going out a lot with friends, and just not being conscious about her health. "If I did have a flareup, I decided I'd rather live this kind of lifestyle versus get healthy," she says. She was too embarrassed to tell her friends about it, so no one knew she was struggling. The nights she really didn't feel well and knew she'd risk an accident if she did go out, she'd make up excuses to avoid divulging the truth. "It was easier to sit home and just say I had a stomachache."

Eventually, after too many treatments failed, Machemer needed surgery.

"I was told it was just going to be a resection," in which part of the large intestine is removed. "But the day before surgery, I had a scope and they determined there was no good connective tissue to connect my bowels to, so the surgeon wanted to do an ileostomy permanently," Machemer says. That meant her bowels would be completely removed, and she'd be living with an external pouch that collects waste, called an ileostomy bag, connected to a stoma (a port made during surgery to give waste a new way to exit the body) for the rest of her life. "I thought, 'How did this happen?' It was the worst news I had ever received in my entire life."

Machemer suffered a ton of complications after surgery: "I had fevers, infections, abscesses in my ovaries and back. My hair was falling out," she says. The skin ulcers came back, too. She ended up being lucky. Six months later, the portion of her bowel the doctors left intact had healed and they decided they could reconnect it after all. The second surgery was a success, and Machemer no longer needed the ileostomy bag.

Given what felt like a second chance, she finally committed to taking control of her health. "I started taking care of myself. Getting enough sleep, changing my diet completely, switching jobs," she says. She vowed to stop stressing about the little things. And to never skip her medication again.

Getting back to her former activity level was a struggle. "It felt impossible, but every day I would just try a little harder. I went from slowly walking down the hall, to walking at 2 mph on the treadmill." She says her love of fitness gave her something to strive for. "I knew where I once was, so I didn't want to give up," she says. "I always had a drive to be active and feel healthy and feel good. I couldn't live my life feeling like crap anymore."

Instagram content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

In 2013, after being laid off from her sales job, she got certified as a personal trainer. "At this time, my health was stabilized but part of me was still nervous about starting my own business. I didn't want to fail and really had no idea how to begin," she says. With some encouragement from her boyfriend and confidence in both her capabilities and finally, health, she began pursuing her dream.

Machemer's experience, while on the extreme end, is proof of how far IBD treatment has come, Rubin says. "It's common for people to be diagnosed when they're young, and it's common for them to struggle with getting the disease under control," Rubin says. "But not everybody ends up with surgeries and complications. Most don't." He calls Machemer a "modern success story." "These used to be conditions we had no effective therapies for other than surgery," Rubin notes. "In the last 20 years, we've made incredible progress and reduced rate of surgery, hospitalization, and bettered people' quality of life."

Now, Machemer is on medication that keeps her IBD under control. She follows a healthy, nutritious diet. She works out for a living. And best of all, she's able to use her past struggle and success to inspire others as they navigate their own wellness journeys.